William+A.+McFarlane

In early January, 1918, 39-year-old Mary Cusack nee Kelly, a widowed homemaker, died at Chicago's West Side Hospital from an abortion perpetrated that day by Dr. William A. McFarlane. He was indicted on January 15, 1918, but the case never went to trial, evidently because he died on of kidney problems on February 23. He was 69 years old.

McFarlane had been born in Canada in 1848 to Matthew and Isabelle Adams McFarlane. An allopath, he graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1890.